Long read ahead, and no TL;DR as my point wouldn’t get across that way.
Has anyone else noticed this growing pattern in the Halo franchise of creating things without justification just for the sake of creating things?
This was a pattern that dates all the way back to Halo 2. And back then it was in some ways understandable due to release date time constraints, and possibly some of the original Xbox’s limitations, or simply ideas that weren’t thought all the way through before implementation. But to start my point, I need to explain something that Halo CE got entirely right:
In Halo CE, there wasn’t a single aspect of the game that was added for the sake of having more content. Every aspect of the game existed to serve a unique purpose, whether that was plot elements, weapons, characters, vehicles etc. Each and every one was unique, even the ones designed to fit similar roles. Probably the closest thing in the game to a pair of redundantly similar elements was the Plasma Rifle and the Assault Rifle, which existed for the understandable reason of giving the Covenant a basic weapon to fill an Assault Rifle-type of role.
But Bungie even managed to make these two weapons radically different in terms of gameplay. Not just in the way Plasma flies through the air, or the idea that it is more damaging to Shields than bullets, but less damaging to health. But in terms of the actual way the weapon worked when you fired it. The Assault Rifle was completely inaccurate, shoot a wall with the thing and your bullets go absolutely everywhere. Even when firing in 3-6 round bursts it felt like you weren’t going to land many hits if you weren’t standing face to face with the enemy. Then fire the Plasma Rifle, and notice the difference. For starters, it’s rate of fire mechanic was completely different. The AR started with spray, and always just sprayed. The Plasma Rifle on the other hand, started with a lower rate of fire, then picked up over time. On top of that, finger tapping allowed PERFECTLY ACCURATE semi-automatic plasma shots. And to further separate the two weapons, the Plasma bolts had a stunning effect, causing a player hit by them to slow down in terms of movement AND the Plasma Rifle dealt double damage on headshots against unshielded enemies (don’t believe that? load it up and test it, it’s true).
The final result being that the Plasma Rifle, despite being an Automatic weapon like the AR, required a completely different skillset and strategy to use. And these were the two most similar weapons in the entire game.
So now let’s delve into a few Ret-Cons to equipment that was made in Halo 2, as well as some completely unnecessary additions:
I’ll start Halo 2 off by making the note that Halo 2 added a lot of great, unique, and very important elements to the Halo universe. The Drones, Enforcers, and Brutes added some new enemies to fight, both of which created a new experience. Characters like Admiral Hood and Miranda Keyes weren’t just carbon-copies of now dead characters Captain Keyes and Foehammer, (though they both lacked the character development and likeable personalities of the characters they effectively replace). And several important weapons such as the Battle Rifle, Energy Sword, and Sentinel Beam (along with some others) were added to the sandbox to help flesh it out. Even adding Elites to Multiplayer was more interesting than redundant, as players could now choose to identify with a separate faction of the universe (though it would have been nice to spawn Elites with Carbines instead of BRs… kind of a missed opportunity for awesome).
But Halo 2 was the first in the franchise to create for the sake of creating. And this led to redundancy, and the first unfortunate ret-con of a weapon we’ve already talked about.
So it was clear in Halo 2 that with Dual Wielding, the weapons needed to be rearranged a little bit. The inclusion and modification of weapons like the SMG and Magnum made sense to squeeze in to the new mechanic. On the bright side, Bungie passed off the change to the Magnum, as a separate model of a pistol. Which made perfect sense. However, this also lead to the butchering of a couple of the Covenant weapons, with no explanation as to why they changed so radically. These weapons being the Plasma Rifle, Plasma Pistol, and Needler, ALL 3 of the Covenant weapons you could use in Halo CE, were changed. And in a few ways for the worse.
The Plasma Rifle and Plasma Pistol completely lost their ability to kill a player. The Plasma Rifle turned into more of a Plasma-SMG, they even made it smaller fictionally to fit in a single Spartan hand. And the Plasma Pistol’s Semi-Automatic function was just ruined, there was no point in firing it normally. It was a pretty sad day for those weapons. The Needler became something of a joke in Halo 2. More useful for being funny looking Maracas when they ran out of ammo. (Well outside of being a beastly anti-brute weapon in the Campaign at least). And what’s more, was these weapons weren’t just “a different model” they were legitimately ret-conned. We were expected to believe these were the same awesome guns from Halo CE. And while this is a less recognized ret-con, the Fuel Rod Cannon was also completely reworked in Halo 2. It changed from an awesome mortar cannon in Halo CE, to a Semi-Automatic Rocket Launcher (which helps bring me to a point of redundancy later).
Well, ret-cons to weapons aside. We then also got a few completely redundant weapons, and even a pointless vehicle clone, added to the sandbox. Now it is understandable that Bungie was trying to flesh out the Covenant weapon palette to fill more roles than Halo CE. And there are shining examples of them creating completely different equivalents out there. Such as the CE Plasma Rifle mentioned above, or the Energy Sword. But then we get weapons such as the Beam Rifle, the Beam Rifle can be described as such: “It’s a Sniper Rifle, but it shoots faster, and overheats instead of reloading” Those are literally the only two differences between this weapon, and the Sniper Rifle. Another redundant add was the Brute Plasma Rifle. It honestly never needed to exist, heck, I’d almost have liked it better if they kept the Plasma Rifle as a big Rifle-like weapon like it was in CE. And made the “Brute Plasma SMG” Which was exactly what the Brute Plasma Rifle is in Halo 2. Instead we get “Plasma SMG ret-con” and “Red Plasma SMG ret-con with a higher rate of fire”. This weapon did nothing, not one thing to make the sandbox better, not after they already changed the Plasma Rifle.
Then when it comes to that vehicle mentioned before. I of course talk about the Spectre. The Spectre is a Covenant Warthog. LITERALLY. There isn’t one thing about the Spectre that is different enough from the Chaingun Warthog to merit being a vehicle of it’s own, and don’t feed me that “It boosts and can strafe” crap, because honestly if that’s the case how is it different from a Ghost? On top of that, it goes against the now more consistent than ever, but still present before vehicle pattern of UNSC = Teamwork, Covenant = Single Pilot.
Halo 2 started a pattern. And it continued with each passing game.
At this point you’ve read the gist and I’m running low on characters, so I’m going to summarize the ret-cons and redundant additions to Halo’s 3, Reach, and 4 in another, shorter post. Then conclude.